Remember that whole bit from Charlie Weis about how he was giving up the offensive coordinator reins so he could become more involved with the whole team, all that touchy-feely stuff?

“I talked to former players and current players, and I think the biggest issue as I looked at this is if you’re playing freshmen and sophomores, it’s not the same as when you’re playing juniors and seniors. The maturity level of the players is not the same. So you can’t take for granted that 18- and 19-year olds are the same as 21- and 22-year olds as far as how you can coach them and the maturity level…”

Yes, I know it’s early, and, yes, I know that talk is cheap, but color me encouraged by what Marcus Washington and Rennie Curran have to say about the maturity of the team’s leadership in David Hale’s blog today.

Perhaps you recall this excerpt from the Sports Illustrated puff piece on Junior I linked to the other day:

… Lane flew back to Tennessee less than 48 hours after his son was born. He’d arranged to have someone fetch him at the airport, but the driver was 25 minutes late. “I came back and within five minutes I’d fired the guy who was in charge of the guy who’d been sent to pick me up,” says Kiffin. “Here’s the point: We need to win. That’s 25 minutes that Nick Saban and Urban Meyer had that I lost because somebody was late picking me up at the airport.”

That’s 25 minutes he could have spent mending fences with coaches in Palm Beach County, Florida, I guess. But I digress. Which is easy to do with Junior.

“He has not fired anybody,” UT athletic director Mike Hamilton said Thursday afternoon. “If he said he has fired somebody, that’s not true. I don’t know if he said it from a standpoint of making a point that ‘We’ve got to get this right.’ But he didn’t fire anybody.

I suppose it’s too much to hope that there’s a tape of the meeting where it was explained to Kiffin that he couldn’t, you know, just fire people. Still, I won’t complain. Junior is living proof that God loves college football bloggers. Thank you, Lord.

Florida State and Miami are moving their game up to a prime time Labor Day slot, so that all of America can get an early look at how far behind the Gators these two once proud programs are, dadgumit.

The Orlando Sentinel is amused to find that Nick Saban defined integrity as “a strict adherence to a standard of values and conduct, personal honesty and independence; soundness in everything you do and every decision you make.” And managed to do it with a straight face, to boot.

For those of you who thought that Florida would recast its offense this season so that the GPOOE™ could demonstrate that he could get his ass under center just as successfully as Tom Brady, nah.

Another SEC rookie head coach speaks: judging from this quote, Gene Chizik has decided to go with the detachment-from-reality route instead of unjustified arrogance, making Dan Mullen the most intelligent member of the class by process of elimination.

“I’ve been doing this for 23 years,” Chizik told the lunch-time crowd. “I’ve never been fired. I’ve never taken a job I sought. They’ve always sought me.

“I believed if you worked hard and did things right the opportunity would come to me. And in 23 years, I’ve never made a bad decision. I’ve never failed in this position.”

Quote Of The Day

“Being a student at Georgia and playing ball, I’ve definitely grown, widened my horizons and experienced things I never thought I would. I feel like I’ve grown on and off the field, and the university prepared me for that. I’ve done some awesome things and met some awesome people. I’ll definitely be back to finish my schoolwork, because that was a big priority for me and my family and weighed heavily on my decision. I know football won’t last forever. It’ll be great to come back and get that degree, so I can tell my kids about it one day.” — Roquan Smith, AJ-C, 3/7/18